Some people have difficulty changing because they are caught in financial or geographical traps. Let us consider those people, however, who have every opportunity to change, but, nonetheless, continue to engage in self-defeating behavior despite ongoing negative consequences:
v Smoking, obesity, and alcohol abuse can lead to chronic illnesses and premature death. Despite ominous health warnings that are more certain than storm alerts from the National Hurricane Center, surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that very few people are willing to stop their self-destructive unhealthy habits.
o 20% of American adults smoke
o More than 30% of Americans are overweight
o 15% of Americans are binge drinkers
v People are often noncompliant to medical treatments
o 50-65% of Americans fail to follow their doctors’ treatment recommendations
o 10% of hospital admissions among older adults result from failure to follow doctors’ directions
o Almost one-third of patients visiting a physician fail to get their prescriptions filled
o A Case Western Reserve University survey showed that 54% of glaucoma patients failed to use their eye drops as directed even though these patients knew they would go blind unless they complied with their doctors’ instructions.
o 70% of patients receiving treatment at a community mental health center dropped out of treatment before the third visit.
v Most serious attempts to maintain behavior change are unsuccessful. A University of Scranton study found that only 19% of those who had made a significant change in a problem behavior maintained the change when surveyed two years later.
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